“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution.” This is the core of the message that the anarchist Shevek proclaims to a mass demonstration of syndicalist and socialist workers gathered in Capitol Square in the city of Nio Esseia on the planet of Urras in Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic 1974 utopian novel The Disposessed.

In my opinion, rather than attempting to unpick the blend of anarchism, Taoism, and feminism that permeates Le Guin’s worldview, it’s best to start with this passage of direct address to the reader if we want to think about Le Guin’s ongoing relevance to socialists. The emphasis here is not just on personal moral responsibility, although this is a constant feature of Le Guin’s philosophy, but on the imperative need to integrate individual and collective values by refusing easy binaries and hierarchies of thought.

Far from a celebration of Shevek’s anarchist homeworld of Anarres, The Dispossessed is what the critic Tom Moylan called a “critical utopia,” which explores both the possibilities and the limitations of such a society. One of the ways in which the novel is able to expand its frame of reference beyond an internal investigation of one possible model of anarchist society is through the parallel plot of Shevek’s trip to Urras.